The relation of spatial skills, spatial memory span, and two anxiety types with statistics anxiety in European and North American University students

BACKGROUND & AIMS: The present two studies investigated the role of spatial cognition in statistics anxiety. The hypothesis that spatial representations and/or visuospatial skills are related to the acquisition of statistics abilities which, when lacking or unused, generate statistics anxiety is examined. MATERIALS & METHODS: To this end, a total of 680 students in Social Sciences from 14 different universities located in one of three countries enrolled in a statistics class at the time of the study were recruited. Study 1 examined a mediation model where visuospatial and verbal working memory (WM) spans as well as spatial anxiety are predictors of statistics anxiety with mathematics anxiety as the mediator. RESULTS: The results show a partial mediation and strong associations between all three types of anxiety (i.e., spatial anxiety, mathematics anxiety and statistics anxiety). The subscale statistics interpretation anxiety was best predicted by visuospatial WM span. Study 2 examined a path regression model where performance on a spatial and a verbal task along with spatial anxiety are predictors of statistics anxiety. DISCUSSION: The results indicate that the mental manipulation subscale of spatial skills is a strong predictor of mental manipulation anxiety which, in turn, predicts interpretation anxiety in statistics. CONCLUSION: Both studies support the role of spatial cognition in statistics understanding. These results have implications for the teaching and learning of statistics.